Discarded Dragons Cover Reveal!

Let’s start this shindig with a fun, totally amazing cover reveal.

I can’t post this without a shout out to the cover designer and artist, Justin Allen.

Seeing the finalized cover for a book might be one of the coolest parts of self-publishing, but getting to that cover requires a lot of communication. When I started working with various artists for The Adventure, I learned really quick that no matter what I had in my head, I couldn’t perfectly translate that into the artist’s head. I had to trust the artist to both listen to my desires and come up with a piece that was all his/her own.

Thankfully, I trust Justin’s work. In fact, there are many times I trust his artistic eye more than the “picture” I get in my head.

Here’s how it works. I give Justin a description of the cover and a section of the book, if not the whole draft, so that he can check out the feel of the story for himself.

Then he sends me a rough sketch of the cover. Many times what he sends back does not exactly match what I described and I’ll be honest, at this stage, my brain does not compute what he’ll give me for a finished cover. I can see the idea and say “yes” or “no” to the general design, but the colors and details and overall feel I can’t really grasp. I trust Justin for this. As long as the design sparks for me, I’m game. (You’ll see in the progression below what I’m talking about.)

The dragon’s position for Discarded Dragons was one of those things. I originally described a dragon taking off in flight, lifting the title on its back. As you can see, that’s not what we ultimately ended up with. And I couldn’t be happier with the end product. Perhaps my original idea would have worked, but I don’t think it would have stood out quite like this one does.

So without further ado. Here’s the cover for my next adventure book, Discarded Dragons.